


Chasing the White Rabbit

by athersgeo



Category: Power Rangers Time Force
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4310814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athersgeo/pseuds/athersgeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was supposed to be Jen's day off - how did she end up having to try and save the world?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chasing the White Rabbit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Angel_Negra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angel_Negra/gifts).



> Not connected to anything in the Identiverse (and especially not related to Almost Unreal!)
> 
> This really WAS supposed to be a short story (*sigh*) - it got away from me

Chasing the White Rabbit

Over the background hum of a busy Minella's Diner, the bleep of her comm. link was quiet, but it grabbed Jen's attention immediately.

"Problem?" Katie asked, even as the waitress brought the coffees and pastries they'd ordered not five minutes before.

"Not sure." Jen frowned at the link. "Captain Logan's office is calling me." Unexpected meetings with Captain Logan were never a good thing. When those meetings came up on her day off, well that suggested that whatever he wanted, she probably wasn't going to enjoy it.

Resigned, she pressed play and listened as the automated message informed her of an urgent meeting at which her presence was required at the earliest possible opportunity.

Yep; definitely not something she was going to enjoy.

"You've gotta go?" Katie asked as Jen tucked the link back into her pocket.

Jen offered her friend a wry smile. "Seems like my day off's going to be anything but."

Katie winced. "And you've just finished pulling a week straight of duty too."

"You break the rules, you pay, I guess." Jen shrugged.

"You brought in Ransik!" Katie retorted. "That should count for something."

Jen shrugged again as she got to her feet. "I think that's the only reason I didn't end up in jail."

"This officially sucks."

"Yep." Jen gestured with her hand at the contents of the table and sighed. "I'll get this – for having to run out, again."

And that was the thing of it. Out of the last six days off, Jen had found herself getting called in to work on all bar one of them, running out on, variously, Katie (twice), Trip and Lucas. Jen would have found it more frustrating, but at least it meant the ire of their bosses was focussed on her and not on her squad.

After handing over the required cred-coins to the bored looking hostess, Jen headed out of the diner and towards the big and imposing building that was Time Force's headquarters. Normally, she'd have to take a hovercab to reach it, but from Minella's, it was only a short walk. Jen used that time to mentally check there were no recent misdemeanours Logan could be calling her to the carpet for, but nothing sprang to mind. Whatever this meeting was about, it wasn't more disciplinary measures – the trouble was, Jen couldn't decide if that was a good thing or not.

On balance, probably not. At least disciplinary measures were something she'd become intimately acquainted with and she knew what to expect. With this sort of summons, who knew what it would mean.

"Jen."

The voice was intimately familiar and made her heart twist in pain because for just a moment, she thought it would be Wes. In the next moment, as she spotted the speaker approaching from the other direction, she knew it wouldn't be. Couldn't be.

"Alex."

There was just the faintest hint of a smile on his face as she acknowledged him. As if he knew what was going through her mind. Irrationally, Jen felt a surge of anger at his presumption.

"You got here quick," was all he said, gesturing at the headquarters building.

"I was at Minella's," Jen answered coolly.

Oddly, that provoked a wince. "Day off, right?"

Jen just shot him a glare and stalked past him into the building.

"Jen, slow down."

She pivoted back. "Is that an order, sir?" she asked, her voice just the right side of insubordinate.

Alex winced again. "I probably deserved that. No, it's not an order – just we're going to the same meeting so…" He trailed off and shrugged.

"And if it's a meeting with Captain Logan, don't you think I'd better get into uniform? Like you said," she added bitterly, gesturing to her civilian clothing, "this was my day off."

Alex blinked, almost as if he hadn't noticed the disparity between their respective modes of dress. Wisely, he said nothing and Jen turned back to head into the locker room, where she kept a spare uniform, just in case.

A meeting with Captain Logan **and** Alex. This day was looking worse by the second.

~*~

Ten minutes later, properly attired and with as much of her anger and irritation tamed down as she could manage, Jen presented herself at Captain Logan's office with a crisp salute and a smart, "Officer Scotts, reporting as ordered."

Logan's expression was stony – as always – as he returned the salute, then stepped aside. "Take a seat, Jen."

That was different. In the last six months, Logan had never been anything other than pointedly formal with her. She did as she was ordered and tried not to show how off balance she now felt.

Alex, already seated, gave another of those faint smiles. But Logan was already taking his seat behind his desk, so Jen swallowed her renewed anger and focussed her attention firmly on the captain.

"We have a situation," Logan began. "At zero three hundred hours this morning a trio of unknown assailants broke into one of Time Force's remote monitoring stations and stole a time warper."

Despite everything, Jen winced at that. "They've gone into the past?"

"Some-when, yes," this was Alex. "Unfortunately, we're having difficulty tracking them from here. The time warper is giving off a localised chroniton trail, but it's too faint for our monitoring stations to pick up. We know they've already travelled back a hundred and fifty years, but beyond that, the trail could lead anywhere."

"You need someone to go after them." This time it wasn't a question but a statement.

"And it needs to be someone with a proven track record of being able to operate autonomously from Time Force," said Logan.

Jen's gaze swivelled from Logan to Alex and back. "Excuse me?"

"I may not like the way you did it," said Logan, "but your results in 2001 show you to be an excellent in-time operative."

Jen opened her mouth, then shut it again, because she truly had no response to that statement.

"You'll be given all the equipment you need," Alex continued, apparently oblivious to her bemusement. "That includes your morpher and a personal time warper. You're authorised for as many jumps as you need to track them down."

There was something odd about the way Alex said that, but Jen had no chance to press because Logan was already speaking again.

"We don't know much about the three assailants. Analysis of the surveillance footage suggests that they're non-standard life forms, but we're still trying to determine what their originating species was. The surveillance footage also makes clear that they're impervious to standard chrono-fire – the monitoring station's automated defences were entirely ineffective against them. Your brief is reconnaissance. Trace them, but do not engage at this time. As much as we need to stop them, until we know more about them, anything you do against them would be like throwing spit wads at a lion."

That provoked a muffled snort of something that sounded suspiciously like laughter from Alex.

"Understood, sir," said Jen, ignoring the antics of her one-time fiancé.

"Report your location back to us as you follow their trail," Logan continued. "Hopefully that will allow us to pinpoint some kind of pattern and help us to predict their ultimate destination."

"You don't think they've reached it yet?"

"All evidence says not," said Alex. "No-one steals a time warper to do a bit of shopping on Rigel V. Our best guess is that they're out to change history and they're making for a temporal pivot point to do so. The problem is, without knowing what their cause is, we can't judge which pivot point's their most likely target. The only saving grace, at this point, is that they clearly haven't reached their target because the timeline is stable and showing no signs of tampering. As long as that remains the case, you've got time."

"And while I'm tracking them…?"

"We'll be working on it from this end," said Logan. "I've called Trip Regis in to start sifting through the data we do have in the hopes of finding some clues, and Lucas Kendall is already following a lead."

Jen nodded slowly. It made sense. The mission, as defined, clearly had to go to a member of her squad – while Time Force had other operatives who'd done stints in the past, her squad had the most recent experience. Trip was an excellent researcher. So was Lucas, when he could be cajoled into doing it. That left it a straight choice between her and Katie – and Katie had plenty of family here. She'd never agree to a mission that might just as easily end up in a suicide run.

"When do I go?" Jen asked.

Logan and Alex exchanged glances. It was Logan who answered, "As soon as you've got your gear."

Jen nodded again. "Understood." She pushed to her feet. "Permission to gear up?"

"Granted."

Jen turned for the doorway, then hesitated and turned back. "I won't let you down."

Logan nodded once. "I know. Dismissed."

~*~

An hour later, dressed now in the black uniform of Time Force's Special Ops division, Jen found herself standing on the threshold of the monitoring station that had been attacked. On her back was a kit pack stuffed with everything from spare power packs for her chrono blaster ("It won't work against the trio you're tracking, but it will discourage anything else," Logan had pointed out) to ration packs ("You might get lucky and find food – and you might not," Alex had said) and clothing for as many conditions as they could squeeze in. On her right wrist was the comforting weight of her morpher, which would also double as her communicator. On her left was the personal time warper. In her hands was the hand-held tracking unit that would help her find her targets. It currently illuminated the spot where the stolen time warper had been stored and showed the destination of the warper's first hop through time.

"You all set?" Alex asked.

Jen nodded. "First coordinates locked."

It was Alex's turn to nod. He took a step back so as to avoid getting caught in the time portal's wake. "Just remember: you've got as many trips as you need." He hesitated. "If you need one to go to 2001 just…well just make sure you time it after you four returned last time."

Jen eyed him. "Are you actually encouraging me to break protocol?"

Alex shrugged. "I'm not telling you not to. And I am telling you no-one's going to be strenuously monitoring where you go. Just don't make it too obvious."

Jen shook her head. Just when she thought she'd figured Alex out he threw her another curve ball. Well, any side trips would have to wait until she'd accomplished her task. "Mission first."

"Always." Alex smiled faintly. "Good luck."

Jen pressed the button on her time warper and watched as the familiar bruise coloured time hole formed. She took a deep breath, and stepped into the rabbit hole.


	2. Down The Rabbit Hole

Down The Rabbit Hole

Jen rolled clear of the portal and looked about herself to see where she'd landed up. The when, she already knew: 2853. The where appeared to be a deserted forest. Well that was so much the better – while the warpers were designed to avoid opening portals into highly populated areas, there was always the danger that there might be the odd being passing by. Not this time. A quick visual scan of the area suggested Jen was the only being with any higher intelligence in a five-mile radius – though there did appear to be a rather perturbed squirrel on the tree branch above her.

"Sorry about that," she called.

The squirrel chattered angrily and departed with a swish of its bushy tail.

Jen smirked and brushed herself off. First order of business was to check the scanner, but she was already certain her quarry had left this temporal point for some-when else. A moment later and the scanner confirmed it. She used the display to track the chronitons to the next departure point. As she went she could see the signs of her quarry's passage. Broken branches and trampled bushes suggested the trio of what-ever-they-weres weren't all that bothered by leaving a trail. Even if she hadn't had the scanner, she could have easily tracked them.

About half a mile into her trek and her morpher bleeped. Jen acknowledged the call. "Scotts here."

"Jen, it's Katie."

Jen nearly dropped the scanner. Katie's was the last voice she'd been expecting. "They called you in too?"

That got a chuckle. "You're not thinking, hon. Trip's running down data; Lucas and Alex are out running down leads. Captain Logan's the boss. Who else did you think they'd have monitoring you?"

Jen paused to take another visual scan. Still no higher intelligence in the area. "I figured it would be one of Alex's minions. Or Captain Logan's."

"Mission's too hush-hush for that."

Jen thought about that for a moment. "I guess it would be."

In the distance, an animal roared.

"What the hell was that?" Katie demanded.

"Hell if I know," Jen answered. "I figure a bear."

"Bear?!"

"I'm in a big-ass forest, so I figure bear is the most likely answer." Jen did another visual scan. "Whatever it is, it's not anywhere near me right now."

There was the sound of an almost comical sigh of relief. "Can you give me anything more specific about your location than 'big-ass' forest?"

Jen chuckled, even as she punched up the information on her scanner. "You don't think that's precise enough for Captain Logan, huh?"

"I don't think it's even in the same realm as precise."

"Well, according to the scanner, I'm in Southern Siberia." Jen reeled off the coordinates. "That mean anything helpful?"

There was a lengthy pause. Then, "Trip says not yet. Any sign of the beings you're after?"

"Only a load of broken branches. They're long gone from here, but I've reached their departure point. It's in a clearing and the scanner says this hop took them back only two years."

"Huh." Katie sounded reflective. "Maybe they under-shot their target."

"Maybe – we'll see." Jen pressed the transmit button on her scanner, sending the details of the next jump to her wrist unit. "Okay, I'm set. I'll comm. when I land."

"Understood." It sounded as if Katie was smiling. "Time Force out."

The connection cut and suddenly Jen felt utterly alone, dwarfed by the trees surrounding her. This was all a long, long way from home. "No going back until this is done," she murmured and pressed the button on her warper to make the next jump.

As befitted a trip of less than ten years, this one was over almost before it began. It also left her in a very different location.

 

Looking round, Jen whistled. She'd heard about places like this – learned about them in history – but by her time they were thought to have been long gone. The megaliths surrounding her said otherwise. She was standing in the middle of a circle of standing stones on a narrow spit of land with water visible on either side.

 

It was a beautiful location and one that gave her the creeps.

 

A visual scan confirmed her prey weren't here either (so much for Katie's undershot theory) while her scanner easily pin-pointed their departure point as being up on the headland.

 

Setting off in that direction, Jen pressed the transmit button on her morpher…

 

…and nothing happened.

 

Jen felt a flash of fear at that. Had it been damaged in transit? But a check of the diagnostics said it was working fine. That suggested some sort of interference, which wasn't good news. It suggested that her prey had finally started to do some damage to the time line between her subjective present and her home century.

 

"Got to find them, and fast," she muttered, picking up her pace from a walk to a jog and transmitting the next jump details to her warper. It looked like another short hop, to the beginning of this century.

 

Just when were they going?

 

And what were they trying to do?

 

~*~

Three jumps on, each one depositing her into a similarly desolate but visually different, landscape and Jen was no nearer her quarry. Objectively, she'd only been travelling for five hours, but at her current destination, it was clearly late evening which made it feel like quite a lot longer. This was going to be where she broke for a rest. The visual scan she'd pulled when she landed told her there was nothing much of anything in her immediate surroundings, but with virtually no ambient light – the moon was showing its thinnest and newest sliver – she couldn't see enough to continue.

Her morpher remained resolutely silent whenever she tried the comm. function. She could only imagine what Katie was thinking about her prolonged silence. "Probably going to give me the biggest hug she can when she finally sees me again."

Jen refused to consider the possibility that the timeline was too damaged for her to make it home.

Instead, she shrugged off her kit and pulled out a ration pack and her cloak. She ought to set up some kind of shelter, but in the pitch dark that would be all but impossible. On the upside, though, it was a warm night – at least her prey had the courtesy to only be picking summer dates rather than dumping her into the middle of winter – so she wouldn't freeze, and the cloak would keep the worst of any dew off her.

Eating the rations, she plotted her next course of action. Clearly, following the trail wasn't going to get her to where she needed to be – the trio were clearly at least one jump (if not five or six) ahead of her. Once day broke, she'd track their next departure point, but instead of jumping directly to it, she'd take a bigger jump. Go much further back in time. That might just get her out of the interference zone and let her get an update from Katie at Time Force Headquarters. Then, depending on what they had for her, she could either jump back to their next destination – or move on to wherever Katie could point her.

Somewhere, not far away, she heard an animal howl – the sound thin and eerie in the darkness. Jen grimaced. By feel, she pulled a basic sensor out of her pack and keyed it to alert if anything came within twenty yards of her position. Then, using her kit as a pillow, she bundled herself up in the cloak and lay down in the hopes of getting some rest, one hand resting on the chronoblaster, just in case.

It turned out to be a precaution unnecessary.

Though she didn't ever actually sleep, Jen did manage a doze for a few hours. She heard more howling – it sounded like a call and response – but nothing came close enough to bother her.

As dawn finally broke, Jen sat up and got her first good look at her location…

…and froze.

Her final jump of the day before had landed her on the edge of a deep gorge. If she'd rolled just a foot more, she'd have gone straight over the edge.

For a few moments, Jen's heart hammered in her chest at the thought of the near miss. She was going to have to be a lot more careful from this point on. Then she got a second shock as she realised she was being watched by a lamp-eyed cat of some description. Too small to be described as a big cat but too large to be what Wes would have termed a house cat, Jen wasn't sure what it was.

The cat licked its chops, revealing large, sharp, teeth.

Jen decided now was a really good time to get out of here.

Hastily scrabbling her gear together, she pulled on her pack and set off for the next departure point. She felt the cat's eyes on her the whole way down the path (such as it was) until it was finally out of sight.

Jen shuddered. Why hadn't her sensor warned her of its presence? But the answer was obvious: the cat had probably already been inside the twenty-yard perimeter when she set it up.

For the second time in as many minutes, she resolved to be more careful.

She hiked for an hour, down a barely-there trail, until she reached more or less the foot of the hill. This was where the beings she was chasing had departed from. Logging the coordinates both of the departure point and their destination (yet another hop of less than a hundred years), Jen keyed in a new destination: 2250. That ought to be sufficiently far into the past to be beyond the interference zone and put her back in communication with Time Force. She also picked a location that was a little more metropolitan than anywhere she'd previously visited: New York City. While it would increase the likelihood of someone seeing her arrival, after nearly a day without seeing another person, Jen desperately needed some human contact, and if she couldn't get through to her own century, New York would certainly provide that.

She pressed the jump button and dived through the timehole as it formed. The longest previous jump had been her first, and that had barely taken ten minutes of subjective time. This one, travelling back more than half a millennium, felt endless by comparison. Inside the time hole there was nothing to see except the swirl of history as it wound back around her in a dizzying, multicoloured stream. At the same time, she had the sensation of constantly tumbling through a void. This was why longer journeys were normally done within a vehicle of some kind – it cut out the worst of the effects. But here, unshielded...

Jen thought she might just throw up – except that she'd lost all sense of what was up, down or sideways.

And then suddenly, she was tumbling for real as the warper spat her out above a rain-swept New York roof. She had just enough time to recognise the fact that she was now falling towards a very real, hard surface and then she hit the roof. Pain jarred through her head and shoulders and soon found an ally as she skidded across the slick surface. She fetched up against a HVAC unit with a bone jarring thud and for a few moments, she was content to just lie there, rain soaking her through.

Gradually, a tinny voice penetrated the haze of pain and confusion.

"Jen? Jen are you there?"

Dizzily, Jen stabbed a finger at her morpher to recognise the call. "'lo?"

"Jen!"

The voice belonged to Lucas, though anything less like the normally cool and calm officer she'd known for three years Jen didn't think she could imagine. "Lucas?"

"You're okay!"

Jen considered her current position, prone and in a heap on a New York skyscraper roof. "Define okay."

"Not dead."

"No, don't think I'm dead." With an agonised groan she managed to flop over and push herself into something that more closely resembled a seated position.

"What happened?"

"Rough landing."

"I mean it's been three days," Lucas retorted. "Last contact was just before you jumped from 2853 and Katie said something about bears..."

Jen couldn't help but laugh at that, though truthfully, none of this was a laughing matter. "I told her there wasn't one anywhere near me." She shook her head, the last of the dizziness beginning to fade. "I'm transmitting my jump data – three days?" she added, belatedly.

"Three nerve wracking days," said Lucas reproachfully.

"Only felt like one to me." Jen pressed the send button on the tracking device which had, by some miracle, survived the landing intact. "I tried to call in when I landed but all I got was interference."

There was a long pause. Then Lucas' voice came back, sombre. "Then it's worse than we thought. Where are you now?"

"2250, I thought that might just be far enough back to get through. Which...clearly it is."

"We've got the data." That was Trip – and now Jen had the mental image of the two of them huddled around a morpher. "Circuit's on it."

"Thanks, guys." Jen started to struggle out of her pack. "So what have you found out so far?"

"Not a whole heap more than you knew when you left," said Lucas. "We still don't know who they are or what they want. They haven't made any demands – so we're assuming it's not a ransom. No group's claimed them – so we're assuming it's just three individuals acting without any backing. About the only thing we've got is your data and—"

"Ley lines." Trip's voice cut in suddenly. "They're following ley lines."

Jen blinked. "Ley lines?" From her pack she withdrew a rain slicker and stiffly tugged it over herself – no sense in getting any wetter. "What are ley lines?"

"Ancient humans—humans from Wes' century believed there were lines of mystical power that criss-crossed the globe," said Trip. "So the theory went, these lines linked up areas of great mystical importance. It was pretty much bogus, but," he added, "there is a germ of truth to the theory too. There are spots on the earth that are much more...well, powerful."

Jen thought about the creepy stone circle and shuddered. "I believe it. So they're going from mystic hotspot to mystic hotspot?"

"Right – it's like they're looking for a specific hotspot at a specific point in time."

Jen groaned. "We already knew that."

"Ah, but this gets us more information," said Trip and it sounded like he was smiling. "There are only certain galactic species that are sensitive to these hotspots. Some humans are – but we already know—"

"Hey!"

The voice was neither Trip nor Lucas. In fact, it belonged to no-one from Jen's home century. It belonged to a man who'd just exited a door out onto the roof. Guiltily, Jen realised she'd been caught trespassing.

"You kids!" the man hollered. "You got a count of five before I'm callin' Secfor to scoop your ass up."

"Gotta go," Jen hissed and, not waiting for an acknowledgement from either Trip or Lucas, she cut the connection to the thirty-first century and focused on getting her stuff together before the man followed through with his threat to call law enforcement. From what she knew of this time period, the law enforcement wasn't especially choosy about prisoner's rights.

Unfortunately, with her shoulders still sore from the fall and her gear slick with rain, it was easier said than done and she was still scrabbling for belongings when the man lifted an antiquated comm. link to his lips to follow through on his threat. There was no other option – she simply couldn't afford to be detained by Secfor. Blindly, she hit the button to generate a time hole and managed to stagger into it. The last thing she heard was the man swearing as she disappeared.

She wanted to smile, but, as the time hole spat her out again and Jen found herself back in the stone circle, there was nothing to smile about. On the upside, the landing had been rather less rough than the one she'd made in New York. On the downside, she was back out of contact with—

"Jen?"

The last thing Jen had been expecting was for a comm call to come through. Pressing the transmit button she said, "Still here, Lucas."

"What happened?"

"I nearly got caught by Secfor."

"Ouch."

Jen took another look at her surroundings and realised it was twilight. The end of another day. Then she checked her scanner and realised, with a dull shock, that she was still in 2250. That explained why she was still in contact with Lucas. How on earth—

Another time hole opened up, on the headland.

"Lucas, stand by," Jen hissed.

She dropped to the ground – there wasn't much cover in the middle of the circle, but it was twilight and getting darker by the moment. As long as she stayed very, very still, whoever came out of that time hole would likely not spot her.

A moment later, as the hole's event horizon stabilised, three beings emerged. All three had prominent horns on their heads. One was tall and almost slender. One had wings – though whether they were actually functional or not was another matter. The third looked almost like a mobile brick wall.

This far distant, Jen couldn't make out what was being said amongst the group and a moment later, they disappeared again.

"Jen, what's going on?" That was Alex.

Jen waited for the stab of anger and sadness his presence usually brought, but the urgency of the situation dimmed even that. "I've found them." She scrambled to her feet, all pain dismissed. "They were just here at, uh—" she peered at the scanner in the growing gloom. "—uh the, uh, Ring of Brodgar."

"They were?!"

"They were here, and then they went again." Jen started to jog up to the headland. "Seems like I got lucky."

"Or there's some cosmic force wants to make sure you catch up to them," said Alex. "You got a good look at them?"

Jen parroted back the descriptions even as she neared their touch down point.

"That ties to what Trip's found," said Alex eventually. "They're Mutant Orgs."

"Orgs? I thought they were all wiped out."

"Apparently not," said Alex dryly. "And now they're looking for the rest of their kind."

"Or, maybe, looking to see if there are any others who escaped."

"Either way, you've got to find them and stop them."

"I thought this was reconnaissance only."

"That was before we knew what we were up against," said Alex grimly. "Their final destination is likely somewhen in 2002. That's when the final Master Org was defeated. If these Mutant Orgs join up with him, they'll be unstoppable and—"

But whatever else Alex had been about to say was lost in a hiss of static.

Jen muttered a curse and cut the connection. Clearly, the nearer the Mutant Orgs got to linking up with Master Org, the more unstable the timeline became. Well, she knew what she had to do now – even if, at least at the moment, she didn't know how she was going to achieve it.

Locking the coordinates of the Mutant Orgs' jump into her time warper, Jen launched her next jump and followed.


	3. The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

As Jen rolled clear of her timehole, she knew something was very wrong. If the stink of smoke and ozone hadn't given it away, the circle of Orgs surrounding her would have clued her in.

The time warper clearly couldn't distinguish Orgs as beings of higher intelligence. A disjointed part of her mind made a mental note to tell the technical people at Time Force that and suggest they upgrade the time warpers accordingly. The rest of her was more focussed on the rest of her surroundings.

From the attitude and sinister chuckling, the Orgs had no intention of letting her go, so what she needed was a—

"Hey!"

The shout was followed by an explosion. Five of the Orgs turned to see what had caused it, which was enough to allow Jen to get to her feet, draw her chronoblaster and start firing. To her surprise, her shots were answered by more chronoblaster fire from elsewhere. But there was no time to consider that. Someone had been kind enough to provide a distraction and she needed to take advantage of it.

"Over here!"

For a moment, Jen thought the shouter was yelling at the Orgs.

"Jeez, are you dumb? This way!"

That was when Jen spotted the sandy-haired youth with disconcertingly familiar features, who was frantically gesturing at her. Snapping off a quick blast at an Org in her way, Jen ran in his direction, dodging another Org as she ran.

"Who—"

"Bios later," snapped the youth. "C'mon."

"What about—"

"The others will find another way back – when they've dealt with the hunting pack." The youth was terse and now Jen recognised the features. The youth was clearly some kind of descendant to Eric Myers – and had clearly inherited his attitude as well.

That realisation just left Jen with more questions, but now the youth was practically towing her along and she needed all her breath for running, so the questions went un-asked and she focussed, instead, on not tripping over any of the obstacles in their path. Any when else and that might have been tree roots, but not here. Here, it was broken down machines, rusted wires and decaying buildings.

"Where am I?" Jen managed to gasp out.

"Silverhills," said the youth tersely. "Not exactly a tourist spot, huh?"

But as soon as he said the name, Jen could see the familiarity, beneath the grim and garbage.

"What happened?"

"What do you think?" retorted the youth sourly. "In here." And he dragged her through a barely-there hole in a chain-link fence and then into the weed-choked mouth of a large tunnel. Jen knew this place. It was one of the storm drains that had once helped prevent down town Silverhills from flooding.

Only once they were safely concealed in the tunnel did the youth slow to a walk. "Don't you know how dumb it is to be out alone?" he demanded.

"I, uh, guess I'm new here." Even to her own ears, Jen knew that sounded lame.

The youth, for his part, snorted. "And I suppose you're gonna tell me next that purple thing you came falling out of wasn't a timehole."

Jen stopped dead. "You know about that?"

He snorted a second time and pushed one ratty sweater sleeve up from his wrist, revealing the Quantum Morpher. "Even if I didn't have this, I'd still know. The Old Man made sure we all know the signs – he's been so sure one of you would come through."

"Who's the Old Man?" Jen asked.

"If you follow, you'll find out," retorted the youth.

Jen sighed. Had Eric been quite this much of a pain in the ass?

She allowed the youth to lead her through the tunnel. Once they got beyond the entry point, it became pitch black so the youth pulled out a tiny flashlight that barely illuminated more than a foot in front of them.

"Watch your step – gets slippery here," he offered.

Other than that, however, he said nothing more and Jen followed him in silence. The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to slide together. She'd somehow ended up in a timeline where the Mutant Orgs and Master Org did successfully hook up, and this was the end result. Humanity either hiding out in storm drains or turned into Orgs themselves.

She shuddered at that thought. The timeline Alex had presented suggested this could happen (could have happened) only a few months after she and the other Time Force rangers had returned home. That meant this had happened to people she'd known.

To Wes.

She shuddered. What had his fate been?

"We go up," said the youth suddenly.

"Up?"

"Here." He guided one of her hands to a virtually invisible metal rung fixed into the tunnel wall and Jen realised there was a crude ladder leading upwards – though how far up she couldn't tell. The flashlight was inadiquate to the challenge of lighting that far. "I'll go first. Make sure you don't get shot on sight – the Old Man doesn't like unannounced visitors."

And without another word, he doused the flashlight. The next thing Jen heard was the sounds of him starting to haul himself up the ladder. She waited a few moments, then followed.

It proved to be a relatively short climb – perhaps fifteen feet – then Jen found herself coming up into a dimly lit anti-chamber.

"Who's there?"

The voice was filled with the rasp of age, but for all that, Jen knew it.

"Just me," the youth called. "And a visitor."

"Luca, I'm too old for your bullshit."

"It's not bullshit."

The youth – Luca – made a wild pantomime with his hands. Jen took it as a cue to speak, so she said, "Eric – it's Jen."

There was a prolonged pause. Then, "Took your damn time didn't you?"

At that, Jen had to laugh – though it was even less funny now than it had been before. "It's a heck of a story."

~*~

Eric's room was beyond the anti-chamber and wasn't much better lit. Though whether that was due to a lack of lighting or out of deference to the room's occupant, Jen wasn't sure. Eric Myers as a wizened old man was quite a sight to adjust to when, as far as she remembered, it was only four months since she'd last seen him as a fit and active twenty-something. She was pleased to know that time hadn't dulled his wits, but less pleased to realise it had robbed him of his sight and rendered his body infirm.

On arrival, Luca had been dispatched to summon "the council" – but what that meant, Eric refused to say and Jen didn't like to ask. Instead she waited as a number of other people appeared in Eric's chamber. Some of them were the same age as Luca; some of them were older. One or two of them had a hint of familiarity to them; most didn't.

"We're all here," announced one of the last arrivals – a middle-aged woman with a severe haircut that made the jagged scar on the right hand side of her face stand out starkly. "Eric, who is this?"

"This is Jen Scotts, of Time Force," Eric answered.

That provoked some snorts of disbelief. Enough that Luca felt the need to jump in: "She arrived here this afternoon, through a timehole."

"Really? You sure you haven't breathed in too much topside air there, Luca?" snorted one of the younger members of the party.

Luca growled. "Ask Mindy. She saw it too."

"Mindy's not back yet."

"What?!" Luca bounced to his feet. "I should—"

"Sit your ass back down Luca Collins."

Jen wasn't sure what surprised her more: the surname, or the fact that Luca obeyed the order without a murmur.

"Eric," began a hesitant man with a pronounced limp. "Are you sure?"

"I may be older than dirt; I might not see you too well, Jimmy; but I hear just fine. She's Jen."

At this juncture, as the wrangling looked as if it might continue, Jen cleared her throat. "What would it take for you to believe I am who Eric says I am?"

The gaze of virtually every person in the room swivelled to her.

"Some proof would be nice," said the woman with the scar. "I mean, you should be Eric's age, surely!"

Jen winced. "Not exactly. Time travel makes things complicated."

"And if you're Time Force, where's the white leather?" demanded someone else.

Jen snorted. "If you send someone on a covert operation, you don't stick them in a white uniform."

That provoked a dry, raspy chuckle from Eric. "I knew it."

"Knew what?"

"You four weren't supposed to have been anywhere near 2001, were you?"

"Well, no – not exactly." Then Jen smiled. "You want proof? Does the pink choronomorpher work for you?" And she held up her right arm, exhibiting the egg-shaped device.

"How does that prove anything?"

For answer, Jen undid the strap and removed it, then replaced it. Into the silence the sound of the morpher reporting, "DNA Confirmed" was loud and clear.

"Happy now?" Eric demanded.

The scarred woman gave a quick smile. "Eric, we had to be sure – you're the only one here who actually met her."

Eric grunted and said no more.

"I'm Anna Jenkins," the scarred woman continued. "My mom was Holly Zaskin."

"I remember your mom – and your grandfather," Jen answered, feeling slightly awkward at this unconventional introduction.

Around the room, people gave their names. Some of them had no ties to the Silverhills she'd visited. Some did. And Jen knew, without a shadow of a doubt she wouldn't remember more than a third of their names, but still she tried to imprint them. When the introductions finished, she glanced at Eric.

"So," she said, "what happened?"

"But you must know!" Luca objected.

Jen shook her head. "When I left the thirty-first century, everything was fine. I was on the trail of three Mutant Orgs and I lost contact with the rest of my squad. That's when I ended up here."

"Simply put," said Anna, "your trio of Mutant Orgs joined up with Master Org and sent the world to hell. We—" she gestured to the gathering "—are the council of resistance in southern California. We do what we can to try and fight the Orgs, but every day there are fewer and fewer humans left and every day the pollution gets worse. Even our most optimistic projections suggest humans will be wiped out by 2200."

Jen winced. It was what she'd worked out – and yet it was so much worse than she'd thought.

"Can you stop it?" asked Luca. "Or are you gonna vanish because your time period doesn't exist any more?"

Jen smiled faintly. "While there's still a chance I can get back far enough to fix it, I'm insulated from what's happened further up the timeline. The thing of it is knowing where to go."

"Silverhills, May, 2002," said Eric quietly. "I don't remember the exact date. There was a big battle between us and the—" he frowned, "—what did you call them? Mutant Orgs?"

"Right."

"We – Wes and I – hooked up with another group of rangers and we tried to stop them, and couldn't. They were too powerful and our weapons were useless."

Jen smiled wryly. "That part's still a problem."

Anna cleared her throat. "Actually, it's not. We have weapons here that will fry an Org to a crisp. Might not do that to a Mutant Org, but it should still make sure they have a bad day."

There were rules and regulations that said Jen wasn't allowed to accept native technology. On the other hand, this was a situation where the rules and regulations had long since gone out of the window. "That sounds like something that would be useful."

Anna offered up another of her brief smiles.

"So, I need to jump back, to 2002, to May," said Jen. "Anything else you can tell me?"

Eric sighed. "The battle's in a rock quarry about a half a mile out of Silverhills. We were just about holding our own when a lucky shot took Wes down. He got back up, but he was hurt bad. That was the moment the battle turned."

"A temporal pivot point," said Jen.

"A what?" said Luca.

"A moment that changes history. Sounds like that's the one I need to change, if I can't stop the Mutant Orgs before it gets to that."

A loud klaxon started to blare, followed closely by the sound of explosions.

"They've found us!" the man with the limp looked pained. "They've breached the perimeter."

"Jen, how much time do you need?" Eric asked, panic threading into his voice.

"A clear ten minutes – and that weapon."

"On it," said someone, Jen didn't see who.

"You heard her," said Eric. "Luca, get your team and hold them off. Edan, go and start the evac. We are not losing this without a fight. Go!"

Suddenly there were people moving everywhere at once. Luca led off a group of the younger members of the group, clearly off to do as Eric asked. The man with the limp – Edan, Jen judged – disappeared in the other direction. Others split off in a third direction – Jen wasn't sure what they were off to do, but there wasn't time to worry about it. She needed to focus on programming the time warper.

"Here," said Anna, producing a solid looking blaster. "More punch than a chronoblaster. Good for crispy-fried Org."

Jen smiled tightly. "Your grandfather would be proud of that, you know?"

Anna nodded. "That's what Eric says. Maybe, if this all works, I'll get to meet him."

"Maybe."

The sound of explosions was getting nearer, and now Jen could hear screams. It gave her fingers extra speed in keying in the data for the jump, but even so, the first Org head cleared the top of the ladder before she'd fully finished.

That Org met a spectacularly grizzly death, shot in the head by a grim looking Anna.

"Jen?"

"Almost done," Jen answered. "I'm only getting one shot at this."

Another Org appeared in the anti-chamber as the last piece of data checked out. Anna shot at that one, too, but missed.

"Jen!"

"I'm going," she answered, pushing the button to launch the timehole.

"Jen?" This was Eric. "Kick their asses."

Jen smiled faintly. "You know it."

As she dived into the timehole, she heard a scream and then it was gone and she was tumbling once more.


	4. Begin at the Beginning

Begin At The Beginning

Not for the first time, Jen landed hard at the end of the time jump, but this time was different. Even as she was shaking off the dizziness and pain, she recognised her surroundings, despite the fact that once again she'd landed in the darkest part of the night. This was the yard behind the Silver Guardians headquarters and a check on her scanner told her that she was in the right year and the correct month.

She sniffed the air.

It was clean. Not a hint of ozone or smog to it.

She allowed herself a brief smile. She'd made it back to where the trouble would begin. Now all she needed to do was find the Mutant Orgs and stop them – before anyone got hurt. And thanks to the information Eric had supplied her with, she knew where to start: with the quarry. Set up sensors there and monitor for the Mutant Orgs' arrival, then scout Silverhills and see if she could find them sooner than the events that would take place at the quarry.

She sighed. It was still a tall order. She could ask Wes and Eric for help, she supposed, but she didn't want to interfere too much with the timeline. It was likely fragile enough as it stood. No; she was on her own for now, just as she'd been for most of this mission.

But she would get it done.

She had to.


End file.
